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Britain's recent decision to test all cattle born between August 1996 and July 1997 prior to slaughter for BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), mad cow disease, appeared to serve academic rather than food safety purpose. But in the bizarre world of France's meat trade, it is taking on political significance. (875 words).

France has progressively isolated itself from its European Union partners by unlawfully continuing to ban British beef imports. French processors and retailers, with it would seem their government's blessing, have now extended the import ban to beef from other EU member states.

French farm minister Jean Glavany has stated, however, that he wants to see the results of the tests before making any move to lift the trade ban on British beef. Whether this means very much is open to question. But if the tests indicated no incidence of BSE, Glavany proves good to his word and lifts the British ban, it would turn the BSE saga inside out with British beef being viewed by the French as safer than that from elsewhere in Europe.

BSE became a serious issue in Europe in March 1996 when it was implicated as a cause of vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), a newly identified, rare but fatal human disease. Exports of cattle and beef from Britain were immediately banned by the European commission which believed that the rest of the European Union was relatively free of BSE.

Britain was, however, able to negotiate a lifting of the ban by implementing a cattle and beef tracing programme which was a fail safe for its Over Thirty Month Scheme which disposes of all cattle above this age which potentially have the disease.

It was able to satisfy its European neighbours about the effectiveness of its tracing programme in time for the ban to be lifted in August 1999. But the French were not convinced over the safety of British beef, despite close to unanimous professional opinion outside France, and maintained their ban. After the failure of diplomatic initiatives, the European commission referred the matter to the European Court of Justice in January 2000. The initial ruling of the court in September 2001 was that the French ban was indeed unlawful.

Armed with the results of a beef producers' survey which indicated that French consumers believed British food is the most unsafe in Europe, while food produced in France was of the highest quality, the French government indicated that it had no intention of lifting the ban.

Meanwhile, however, late in 2000, as anticipated by the European commission but refuted by many members states, it became apparent that BSE was much more widespread in the European Union than previously supposed. First the testing of sick animals and more recently of all slaughter cattle turned up significant numbers of infected cattle.

All member states are now required to test fallen stock, casualties and all cattle over 30 months entering the food chain. Excluding Britain, to date in 2001 721 cases have been reported compared with less than 500 during 2000.

More worrying were the 145 cases of BSE, reported in the eight months to August - the most recent data published, in supposedly healthy cattle destined for human consumption. In fact outside Britain almost two thirds of diagnosis resulted from testing rather than clinical observation. In Britain less than 8 percent turn up undetected clinically by testing.

The reason for this striking difference almost certainly relates to politics rather than veterinary practice. Britain only slaughters infected BSE cattle and provides compensation for all clinically diagnosed animals. Elsewhere in Europe, BSE is irrationally treated as infectious and whole herds are slaughter if a single animal is diagnosed. While compensation is provided, there must be a natural inclination to turn a blind eye where the threat is the dispatch of a whole herd.

The French in particular may, however, view the issue differently. They would probably claim that as only a third of BSE cases in France are detected clinically, Britain's programme that relies mainly on clinical diagnosis misses many cases, even if undiagnosed cases which would be over 30 months of age do not even enter the food chain.

Testing all British cattle born within 12 months after August 1996, when slaughtered, will serve two purposes. It will reveal how effective the ban on feeding meat and bone meal implemented at that time has been in eradicating BSE. To date just two cases has been diagnosed and they may have been the result of the illegal use feedstuffs bought before the meat and bone meal ban.

Further the absence of significant numbers of cattle testing positive, which have not been detected as having BSE clinically, will provide assurances that British clinical detection programmes are effective.

Past experience would suggest that this would not be enough to influence the French. But having extended its beef ban to some of its other European partners, the French may just be looking for an opportunity of show some rationality in their position.

As the French case against British beef is somewhat different to the others, France could lift the British ban without setting a precedence elsewhere. It could therefore continue the convenience of protecting its beef market from other sources.

November 26, 2001